One wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry, when the Thein Sein regime
ordered a unilateral ceasefire in Lajayang and in all conflict areas –
Kachin State and northern Shan State - with the Kachin Independence
Organization/ Kachin Independence Army (KIO/KIA), it never has a chance
to take hold, as the fighting, or rather the government’s troops
offensive, continues right after the unilateral truce was supposed to
take place last Saturday 19 January, at 6:00 hours in the morning.

Sai Wansai

And
so the second ceasefire directive from Thein Sein government was
roundly and conveniently ignored by the Burma Army, as was also the case
in December 2011, when the first, unilateral truce order was doled out
to stop the fighting in Kachin State.

La Nan, a spokesman for the KIO, said there were Burma Army artillery
attacks and “skirmishes” on Saturday morning around Lajayang, at the
very place and time the cease-fire was supposed to take effect.

On the same Saturday, according to AP, the Kachin rebel official said
the latest fighting was taking place at Hka Pot and Hka Ya Bhum, both
rebel-held hilltop posts located to the north and west of Laiza,
respectively. He said fighting was also taking place in Hphakant, more
than 100 miles farther away.

Hka Ya Bhum is a mountaintop KIA position and one of the last lines
of defence of Laiza, a city home to many civilians and refugees,
according to Free Burma Ranger’s report from the front line.

Free Burma Ranger wrote, at 14:00 hours on 21 January, the Burma Army
began burning houses in Na Long, a village of approximately 100
houses. Na Long is 9km west of Lajayang, which is 6km west of Laiza.
The fires were visible from Kachin Independence Army (KIA) positions
atop Hkaya Bum. It is unknown whether any of Na Long’s residents were
still in the village.

Thein Sein in a speech in Rangoon Sunday 20 January, said government
forces are within an "arm's length" of the main KIA base in the town of
Laiza, on the border with China. He said he has ordered troops not to
attack the base as a show of good will.

The rational or excuse behind the government offensive, even after
its recent unilateral ceasefire announcement, is that it is just
conducting and returning fire in “self-defence”. One couldn’t help to
imagine if burning down a village of defenceless villagers is suppose to
be an act of self-defence.

The latest Thein Sein regime unilateral ceasefire is designed to
shore up its reformist posture, woo international aids and opinion,
while painting the KIO as an odd man out, when 13 other armed ethnic
groups have already signed initial truce with the government.

One notable backing of government position came from The
International Crisis Group (ICG) South East Asia Project Director Jim
Della-Giacoma according to Kachin News Group analysis on 17 January,
when he claimed in his 10 January blog posting that the KIO “has not
reciprocated the President’s announcement of a unilateral ceasefire and
has continued offensive actions against military and strategic targets.”

Contrary to the ICG pro-government position, most ethnic resistance
armies and non-Burman ethnic and well-informed Burman population
sympathize with the KIO; and that both of Thein Sein regime’s unilateral
ceasefire overtures were only declared but never implemented or
followed by the Burma Army.

But the benefit of doubt given to Thein Sein as a reformer begins to
evaporate, especially in the eyes of non-Burman ethnic nationalities,
with the ongoing offensive in Kachin and Shan States.

Meanwhile, the KIO in its reply to the recent government peace talk
initiative that political dialogue will only occur within the mold of
United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), a coalition of ethnic armed
group representing 11 members, including the KIA, 6 of them currently
have an initial ceasefire with the Thein Sein regime.

The government and the military might think that with the fall of
Liaza, or total blockage of the city, will force the KIO to negotiation
table from the position of weakness, and thus could dictate the terms of
agreement; somewhat along the line of total surrender. But the
likelihood is a transformation of partly, positional defence resistance
of KIA, especially in areas around Laiza, to full fledge, heightened
guerrilla and urban warfare, which would even be more costly in terms of
human causality and economy.

The UNFC and also other ethnic armed groups are well aware that after
the Burma Army is through with the Kachin, it will be their turn to
endure the beating. And as such, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), in
preparation to counter the Burma Army’s attacks from the air, is arming
itself with sophisticated weapons acquired from China, with the blessing
of its authority.

On 21 January, DVB wrote that the Chinese-made PTL02 Wheeled Tank
Destroyers is believed to have taken place in the middle of last year,
according to Janes Intelligence Review. The author of the report,
Thailand-based intelligence analyst Anthony Davis, says that the
delivery marks “a significant escalation in the equipment supply to the
UWSA” from China.

It said that the transfer of the armoured vehicles,
which was reportedly accompanied by Chinese-made man-portable
air-defence systems (MANPADS), is likely closely connected to recent
political developments in Burma.

No doubt, the recent Thein Sein cosy relation with the West must have
pushed the Chinese to reconsider its relation with the non-Burman
ethnic armed groups along the border, which it has not bothered to make
use of in any significant way until now.

According to a report in Foreign Policy, on 15 January 2013, titled
“Has China lost Myanmar”, a Chinese government analyst at a private
gathering in November said that China should “diversify” its approach.
"The border ethnic groups are our card and China needs to play it well,"
said another influential Chinese analyst in Beijing.

These Chinese analysts argue that China should also support the
border ethnic groups in their struggle against Naypyidaw by pressuring
the Burmese military to relax its attacks and keeping the border open to
allow the movement of timber, jade, and other natural resources.
According to these analysts, assisting the minority groups will restore
China's leverage over Naypyidaw and push Myanmar to respect China's
national interests. After all, in their view, since Myanmar is throwing
itself into the arms of the West, China has nothing to lose and
everything to gain.

Thein Sein reform process, particularly in resolving the ethnic
conflict, is in essence the same with General Ne Win’s peace call of
1963. Ne Win had directly demanded the surrender of armed ethnic groups
and the communist and acceptance of his Burma Socialist Programme Party
(BSPP) regime without question, which led to the breakdown of the peace
talks. But Thein Sein regime is more refined in a sense that it at least
offers a semblance of power-sharing by introducing multi-party
parliamentary system with State and Region governments, albeit without
their own self-drawn constitution, political decision-making power,
rights to administer their own natural resources and a fair share of
taxation revenue.

Apart from that, Thein Sein peace overture demands a total surrender
of all ethnic armed groups in the form of Border Guard Force (BGF)
program that would be under the sway of Burmese military. And it also
insists that the reconciliation process be thrashed out within the mold
of its 2008 Constitution, within the parliament, which is dominated by
military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and
impossible to amend military favoured Constitution, the non-Burman
ethnic groups have no chance whatsoever to regain their rights of
self-determination and equality.

The point here is that the successive military regimes from
Revolutionary Council, BSPP, State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC), State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) to the present Thein
Sein regime have not deviate from the original military doctrine,
starting from 1962, when Ne Win stage a military coup in the name of
preserving and upholding national unity.

The military mindset or doctrine continues to be the same, which is
the concept of ethnic Burman domination of national politics, complete
with rigid central control. In short, what Thein Sein has delivered is a
semblance of democratic trappings, where the Burman population in low
land receives partial freedom and democratic rights, but oppression and
military occupation in non-Burman ethnic areas. That is why the present
regime has been reluctant to come up with the commitment of a federal
solution, which is the original agreement signed between the Burman and
the non-Burman ethnic groups in Panglong, Shan State, in 1947.

Thein Sein and the Burmese military know the real root cause and also
the viable solution. Unless the Burman political class is ready for a
change of heart and abandon their ethnocentric, racial supremacy
doctrine and accept the aspiration of ethnic rights to
self-determination, equality and democracy, the reform process will be
meaningless. In concrete term, the military and the government need to
implement an all-inclusive, power-sharing political system, following
the withdrawal of military occupation from the ethnic areas. One could
well imagine that ethnic conflict resolution is unattainable, so long as
more than fifty percent of the Burma Army troops – some 280 out of the
total 526 Burma Army battalions - are stationed in Kachin and Shan
States and treats them as colonial possessions.

Thein Sein regime might now be diplomatically having an edge, due to
the West eagerness to woo Burma into its orbit because of strategic
consideration and economic interest. The recent lukewarm protest of the
West on aerial bombardment of the Kachin for escalating the conflict is
the case in point, which is just a slap on the wrist for the regime, so
to speak. But the battle field gains of the Burma Army could turn into
Thein Sein’s nightmare, once the KIO decided to up the ante by staging
urban guerrilla warfare and the initial ceasefire break down with the
other ethnic resistance armies, due to lack of meaningful, political
accommodation.

The lack of trust and anger from the part of UNFC members could be
detected in its statement on Kachin conflict, dated 20 January 2013. One
of the paragraph writes:

“Only the most gullible people would believe that Tatmadaw (Burma
Army) is reacting only in self-defense when it deploys more than 120
army battalions, jet fighters, helicopter gunships and heavy artilleries
against the KIO/KIA, which have only about 20 battalions, a few mortars
and some militia troops. There is no doubt that Tatmadaw has been
waging a total war against the KIO/KIA and the people of Kachin State.”

For now, Thein Sein regime still have the choice to seriously and
earnestly proceed with the reform, which is in tune with the aspiration
of the people, or just go on camouflaging its real intention of
political domination and centralized control of the military clique,
with fake reconciliation reform process.